4th of July Veggie Statue of Liberty Platter

A Veggie Platter Fit for Fourth of July

I do a Veggie Christmas Tree for Christmas. I always like to do a healthy, fun veggie platter for holiday meals so I wanted to do something for Fourth of July.

The Statue of Liberty is a fun and easy broccoli sculpture on a pedestal of cauliflower. It is the centerpiece to a healthy and attractive veggie platter for any patriotic occasion.

We do both vegan and non-vegan dips and it becomes a conversation piece.

Yes, that's a cucumber sailboat down in the tzaziki dip we made. My husband and I were having a little fun!

What You Need

Veggies

2 Medium Sized Broccoli Crowns

2 Medium Cauliflower

5 or 6 Carrots

1 Green Pepper

1 Red Pepper

1 Yellow Pepper

add any more peppers to taste

Cucumbers, or any other type of Veggie you would like to add

Craft Supplies

5" square Styrofoam Block

8" Styrofoam Cone

Cooking and Serving Supplies

Plastic Dip Tray

Wooden Skewer Sticks

Cocktail Toothpicks with Cellophane

Round Wooden Toothpicks

Flat Wooden Toothpicks (you can sub one for the other, but it works better if you have the right toothpick for the right application.)

How To Build It:

First you want to find yourself a nice picture of The Statue of Liberty for reference. This is easy for even a non-sculptor because you just need to capture the basic shape, build a skewer for her raised arm and add small green pepper spikes with flat toothpicks poked pointy side into the green pepper and flat side into the broccoli head.

Once you make the form out of your standard floral/craft styrofoam (I built a small square, hot glued to a 6"cone left over from Christmas), you toothpick the broccoli florets with round wooden toothpicks and round wooden scewers as needed.

The cauliflower is cut in large chunks and pinned the same way.

The torch is a cutout shape from a yellow bell pepper.

The fireworks are built with cocktail onions in the center. I poked the thin end of a flat toothpick through the cocktail onion and into a thin strip red pepper. They are attached with skewers into the Statue of Liberty form. My husband really took some time attaching some toothpicks to each pepper in the fireworks to get them to straighten out and they looked fantastic! I had let them go a little limp, which although still realistic, was a little... well, limp.

The Tray with the Styrofoam Form

This pic is from my Veggie Christmas Tree, but you can get the idea about what your form should look like, to start.

You could also use a squash as the base if you want to keep it all veggie!